


Eyes On Fire

by galacticAcolyte (coffee_goth)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Pirates, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_goth/pseuds/galacticAcolyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is first borne to you on alcoholic breath as a whisper, barely more than empty air. “I met a monster once,” he rumbles. “Prettier than the moon and deadlier than the sun.”<br/>“The Demoness,” you repeat. Your words fall into a void of silence.<br/>“Death’s very own handmaid,” the indigo captain mutters. “And pretty as the moon, she was.” He coughs coarsely, hacking purple phlegm into his empty tankard. “She’ll come again, she will, when you least expect it. Pray to Gl’bgolyb you aren’t the poor souls who’re around ta see it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes On Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [viridianmasquerade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/viridianmasquerade/gifts).



The first time you ever hear of the Demoness, you are giddy with ale and bloated with success, dripping cobalt blood from the hem of your cape and caegars from the deep pockets of your coat. You’d shined your boots with a lesser Gamblignant fleet earlier that night, and you are in no state of mind to pay heed to fishermens’ tales passed on gusts of sour air through an old sea-battered tavern.

You are celebrating with the higher-blooded members of your crew, the navies and indigoes and deep violets who you trust the most, the scarred and wrinkled and salt-weathered lot who’d spent sweep aboard the _Vanquisher_ slashing through swathes of impostor seadwellers, blades gleaming blue and green and yellow in the moonlight. You have your own stories, of course, of sweeping victories and bitterly lost defeats, of conquests across all four seas with your crew, and on any other night you would boast these at the top of your lungs as spoils of war. But on this night your tongue is thick and stiff in your mouth, swollen with soporifics, and you are content to remain silent, your senses dulled and your defenses low.

She is first borne to you on alcoholic breath as a whisper, barely more than empty air, upon the tongue of an indigo captain so old that his face has collapsed into a mass of charcoal wrinkles, eyes glowing purple slits between the folds of skin. His voice is rough and gravelly, chitinous windpipes strained by cruel ocean air. It is an imperious tone, one that commands immediate attention and respect, one that cuts through the general chatter of the tavern.

“I met a monster once,” he rumbles. “Prettier than the moon and deadlier than the sun.”

Your crew’s rowdy banter dies down, one by one turning to face the ancient captain. “A monster?” your skipper scoffs. “We’ve fought monsters, cap’n, bigger’n our flagship. ‘S nothin’ new in the ocean.”

The indigo straightens slowly, his bones creaking. “This one was a woman.”

The attention of the whole establishment has been piqued. You turn to face him, cradling your flagon in one hand. There are not many sea monsters you have never encountered in your travels; you’re sure his story is nothing new, or else an exaggeration.

“Murdered the rest of my ship,” he continues. “Set the whole fleet a’ fire. I was the only survivor.”

It elicits a bout of mutters from your trolls. Your first mate asks “What was your ship?”

“The _Mercenary._ Grand old ship it was, too, sailed for a good three hundred perigees before it was destroyed.”

You’ve heard of the _Mercenary._ You were barely pupated when it had been found a burned-out shell adrift in the Western Sea, filled with the husks of dead trolls. It had been assumed there were no survivors. There was never any conclusion about it, though it was generally thought it had been the work of a jilted quadrantmate or else a rogue fleet of lowblood gamblignants.

“That fleet was vanquished twenty-two sweeps ago,” you say.

The old captain turns to look at you. The full brunt of his eerie purple gaze lands squarely on your oculars; despite the uncomfortable warmth of the tavern, a chill runs down your spine as you feel the first hint of his chucklevoodoos brush at the corner of your consciousness.

“They call ‘er the Demoness,” he says gravely. “She spared my life and I spent the rest of mine tryin’ ta end hers’.”

“The Demoness,” you repeat. Your words fall into a void of silence.

“Death’s very own handmaid,” the indigo captain mutters. “And pretty as the moon, she was.” He coughs coarsely, hacking purple phlegm into his empty tankard. “She’ll come again, she will, when you least expect it. An’ pray to Gl’bgolyb you aren’t the poor souls who’re around ta see it.”

-

You do not hear of the Demoness again for the next few perigees. In fact, she slips entirely out of your mind in a haze of alcohol and exhaustion, lost among hundreds of other fishers’ tales that have passed through your auricular sponge clots. Your crew is growing complacent. You’ve had a run of good luck recently, and your ship’s coffers are swollen with jewels and caegars. There hasn’t been any real competition in what seems like forever; aside from the constant petty skirmishes with Mindfang’s gamblignants, which are really more of a nuisance from anything, your fleet has faces no competition in domination of the high seas.

You’ve caught the attention of others as well. Her Condescension is pleased with your success. She hasn’t told you directly, but the message was passed down and found its’ way onto your ship, swelling the pride of the crew. Other fleets have taken notice, as well, and suddenly, you are no longer just Dualscar, the man who lost a duel to a cerulean pirate and forfeited half his reputation in the folly of his youth. You are now the Orphaner, Ocean’s terror, lord of the Southern Sea, heir of Ahab’s Crosshairs and favorite of Her Imperiousness herself.

You have more respect among your subordinates than ever. Your first mate comes down to report, indigo flush high in her cheeks and her hair a wild tangle. They must be celebrating on deck. You can’t say you blame them.

“Azaria,” you greet her coolly. She salutes before taking a seat on the other side of your desk.

“Hello, captain,” she answers a bit breathlessly. “They’ve broken out the rum we captured.”

You wave your hand. “They’ve done good. Nobody woulda bought it anyway.”

“We have done well,” she agrees, and smiles, displaying rows of razor teeth. “Captain, the other fleets are talking.”

“I’ve heard.” Above, you can hear music start up, a familiar and jaunty tune. Azeria taps her claws on her thigh to the beat.

“I have a rendezvous tomorrow night in the city.”

“With who?”

“Captain Medira Kazden.”

Azeria raises an eyebrow. “The navyblood on the _Harbinger_?”

“The navyblood captain,” you amend. “Her fleet is one of the largest in Alternian seas. She has political influence, too, it’s not like she’s not powerful.”

“Oh, I see.” Your first mate smirks.

You’re not going to pretend the meeting is solely political. Kazden is angling for an alliance between your fleets, but the messages passed between you have been much more than cordial. Her rank is only two steps below your own blood; it would not be out of line to fill a quadrant with her, especially considering her position of influence and considerable power.

You raise an eyebrow. “What?”

“Good luck,” she says. “I’m sure it will be an auspicious match—politically.”

“Mindfang’s taking allies of her own. Despite her incompetence, we cannot underestimate her.”

Azeria opens her mouth to say something, but at that moment the door is flung open by a greenblood shiphand, eyes wild. “Captain,” he gasps. “The _Harbinger_ ’s fleet is sending out distress signals. They’ve been attacked.”

“How far from here?” you ask. Azeria stands, fastening her coat over her shoulders.

“About’n hour away,” he answers, his voice a breathless rush. “Their ship is on fire.”

“Who’s the aggressor?” Azeria questions while you reload Ahab’s Crosshairs hastily.

He shrugs. “They don’t know.”

-

By the time you get there, it’s already too late.

The sun is threatening the edge of the horizon, just warm enough to make your skin itch uncomfortably under the pink-tinged sky. Orange flickers on the water from a distance. You can smell smoke from miles away, dancing across the calm surface of the sea in curls and plumes.

It’s almost beautiful, in a terrifying way. As far as you can see, the burning fleet spreads over the water, hundreds of self-contained funeral pyres glowing in the dawn light. They’ve been aflame for a long time; the ones closest are charred black husks, the deck ravaged by heat.

The _Harbinger_ sits at the forefront of her fleet, a proud and ornate corpse, fingers of flame licking along the marred figurehead. She’s oddly mostly intact, the deck untouched by fire, though there is no movement.

Next to you, Azeria curses colorfully. The rest of your crew is below deck; they’ve gone to protect themselves from the sun, but you’ve always had a higher tolerance for deadly heat than most trolls.

“What should we do?”

You turn, your cape falling limp in the absence of any breeze. “I’m going to go look for survivors.”

Your first mate points to the encroaching sun wordlessly. The skin of her arm is already flushed darker than usual.

“I’ll be careful,” you say, and haul the gangplank to the edge of the railing.

It’s silent and eerie as you set foot on the _Harbinger._ Your heavy boots clank on the hollow wood, echoing through the thick air, and you glance about for signs of life. The surface of the deck is soaked in blood, teal and green and blue and purple running together in a delirious slush, congealing on the hem of your pants. You wrinkle your nose and pick your way over the corpse of a green lookout boy.

“Kazden,” you shout. Your voice rings out across the ship. There is no response.

You find her starboard-side, face down in a pool of navy blood, coat torn from her shoulders and two small, round holes bored through her brainstem at its’ weakest point in the back of her neck. Atop the body is perched a completely motionless female troll. Her eyes, sharp and open and glowing toxic crimson, do not move. She’s been watching you.

“Hello, Orphaner,” she says. Her voice is thick and guttural, a lowblood dialect that grates on your auricular sponge clots. She has two long, smooth objects in her hands. As you watch, she brings them up above her head, where the dawn light glints off the wickedly tapered ends. There’s navy blood crusted over six inches at the end of each one. She winds a pile of dark hair around them, and they nearly disappear from sight behind her head.

There is sea salt on your lips. You lick them, tasting bitter, familiar tang before responding. “Who did this?” you demand.

Her face splits into a cruel crescent grin, rows of razor incisors impossibly white, and does not answer.

“State your name and caste,” you try again.

She shrugs. “I have many names. None of them are mine.”

“You are obviously a lowblood,” you continue. You are shaking slightly, tension thrumming in your shoulder blades, and anger is pulsing hot through your noble veins. “Killing a navyblood at your caste is considered a blood crime punishable by death. I could cull you right now and it would be the legal thing to do. I would be commended, dirtblood.”

She raises her shoulders ever-so-slightly, and her grin blossoms further. “Nobody has culled me yet,” she answers.

You could.  You know you could. She’s slight and wiry, the hard muscle typical of lowbloods absent from her arms. You could probably snap her spinal column with your bare hands.

“Do you threaten me, Orphaner?” she asks quietly. For the first time, her eyes move, steady gaze flicking up to your hand, where you are reaching for the grip of the Crosshairs.

“Tell me,” you say. “Tell me who did this.”

The lowblood stands. Her skirt falls straight, shimmering forest green; her hair tumbles in ebony loops. Her smile is wicked.

“I did.”

Your back is uncomfortably warm. The air weighs heavy on your skin, dense and charcoal with smoke, and your air sacs fill up with dirt. You choke a little and equip the Crosshairs.

“Who do you work for?”

“I serve only one master,” she replies, her voice deceptively calm, “and it is Death.”

Death’s very own Handmaid.

“Demoness,” you say.

“That’s one of my names.”

The Demoness remains unimpressed by your Crosshairs, now fully equipped and shining with energy in your hands, but no troll is immortal. “I challenge you to a duel,” you say. “To the death.”

“That’s very unwise, Orphaner.” Her voice is silk over steel.

“You’ve shown errant disrespect for the hemospectrum and are a criminal sought throughout the galaxy. It’s my duty as a loyal servant of Her Imperial Condescension to end your rampage.”

“You cannot kill me.”

The Demoness pulls the needles from her hair once again. Her black tresses are stained blue with dried blood.

“You pitied her,” she says, and kicks Medira Kazden’s stomach. The body turns over. Her navy eyes stare blankly up at the approaching sun.

“I coulda,” you reply.

The Crosshairs thrums with energy in your hands. Static electricity crackles along the curve of your horns, filling your brainstem with a harsh buzz. Your skin is tight and itchy, stretched thin over your skeleton, and the warmth is so uncomfortable as to be painful. You can feel every nerve ending in your body, every synapse firing, every millimeter of sticky heat coating your exposed skin.

“Fine,” she says. “I accept, _Dualscar._ ”

Your blood boils.

You jerk the trigger, the Crosshairs whining, and she darts away just as you shoot, blue fire searing across the wood and charring huge swaths of deck. For a moment, she has disappeared, and then needles click and flash and you sidestep, swinging your cumbersome gun around. She is poised on the railing, perfectly balanced and silhouetted in rising sun.

“Better hurry,” she says. “Dawn waits for no troll.”

With a roar, you shatter the air where she stands, but she is gone when the flames fade—and now she’s behind you, skin treacherously warm, lowblood warm, her hot breath teasing your neck. You jerk back and the butt of the Crosshairs connects and you hear a nearly- imperceptible gasp, a soft stumble, and you ram the gun back again but she’s not there now, she’s fallen to the deck and rolled away and her needles shine blinding.

You are always a step behind, a second too late. You grip at green fabric connected to no dress, find smooth wood where an arm should have been. And all the while she _laughs,_ laughs and taunts and smiles sickeningly, luring you, infuriating you. And you see why the captain called her the moon, because she is just as intangible, just as hard to catch.

Kazden’s body is eviscerated in the Crosshairs’ errant flame, and you can’t find it in yourself to care. Every thought is dedicated to the fight, to catching up, to finally hearing those insufferable shrieks of manic laughter turn to screams of pain while flesh sears and crackles black. You shoot with reckless abandon, an unending stream of blinding cerulean energy, following her path, always a step behind.

With a high-pitched whimper, the flame dies, and you curse, futilely tugging the trigger. It recharges slowly—you’ve nearly burned it out, you didn’t even know that was possible--and your vascular pump is beating double-time, ringing in your auricular sponge clots—

There is ice at your neck.

“Caught you,” whispers the Demoness.

The tip of the needle is pressed cold to your jugular, white cold pain, and you can feel a drop of blood drip down your throatstem, infuriatingly slow. You want to smear it away, but she’s got your arms pinned—got your whole body pinned—

“Don’t move,” she murmurs, and her voice is oddly husky, still smooth and absent of any breathlessness, but lowered and somehow sensuous.

“Would if I could,” you bite out.

She chuckles deep in your ear. “Don’t feel too bad about it, Orphaner. Nobody’s ever beat me in a duel before.”

You’d underestimated her. She’s stronger than she looks, all her force tied up in tendons hidden under her red-flushed skin, wiry hard muscles working almost effortlessly against your best efforts to free yourself.

“If you kill me,” you choke, “the Condesce is gonna come after you. She’s not gonna let it go. I’m a seadweller, you bitch.”

“The Condesce has been after me for millions of sweeps,” she spits derisively. “She is no threat to me. I have culled millions more trolls than she ever could, created more conflict than this planet could stand. You are no threat to me. I am already dead.”

Your limbs are suddenly limp. She releases you, and you fall to the deck, paralyzed by telekinesis. She drops to her knees.

“I am going to spare you,” she breathes.

Her teeth click against your own, hard, persistent—she’s an aggressive kisser, but it’s not painful, no, she doesn’t bite, it’s just a kiss, a searing, destructive kiss, and when you finally find your legs again, she is gone, and the water ripples below the burning ship.

-

It’s harder to forget her this time.

You come back shaken and sunburned and immediately retreat to your cabin and lock the door and don’t answer anyone, not even Azaria, and you pull out all of the oldest books you’ve plundered from other ships and leaf through them frantically, ripping pages, searching for any mention of a Demoness or a Handmaid or a rustblooded psychic with the force of a thousand trolls. She isn’t mentioned in the history books, not in the naval journals or the old army accounts or the tomes on dark majyyks you’d captured from Mindfang’s library. You find one mention of her, on a list of Alternia’s most wanted trolls, resting at number three without a picture, listed only as ______ _Megido, rustblood, psychic, extremely dangerous, wanted for crimes against the hemospectrum and the empire._ There is a price of five million caegars on her head.

It’s not enough. You turn the fleet around and head back to the port you’d rested in last night. Azaria screams through the door that the crew is restless and irritable, that they don’t understand what’s going on, but you couldn’t care less, really, what they think. It’s barely nightfall when you dock and you bound off the boat, skin raw and angrily protesting your jerky movements, and you storm into the tavern. The teal bartender looks up in surprise.

“Where’s the indigo that was here last night?” you demand.

He cowers. “There were a few indigoes here, sir, which one?”

“The ancient one. The captain.”

“Left at dawn,” the teal mumbles. “Didn’t leave a name.”

You slam your fist on the counter. The ornate wood cracks under your fist, and the bartender shudders and steps back.

“ _Damn_ it,” you exclaim, and nearly slam into Azaria on your way out.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she asks. “What are you _doing?_ ”

She is scared, you realize suddenly. You’ve never seen your first mate scared before, but now she is, waves of fear rolling off her inadvertently. They don’t affect you, blood-privileged as you are, but around you the lesser trolls begin to shiver from the force of her accidental chucklevoodoos.

“We have a new mission,” you tell her. “On behalf of the Condesce. We are gonna find one of Alternia’s most-wanted trolls.”

-

_There are many instances throughout history of rustbloods with supernaturally potent psychics. These accounts bear strange similarities to each other: the rustbloods, always female, fight with needlekind abstratus and command a vast arsenal of witchcraft and violent psychic powers. They have a penchant for errant destruction and chaos and leave a trail of blood wherever they visit. They instigate class warfare and commit blood crimes across the planet. This terrorization has occurred for billions of sweeps—since the origin of recorded history on Alternia, longer than any rustblood could possibly live, longer than even the Empress._

You stop to turn the page carefully, ancient parchment crinkling under your hand. It was an ordeal to find this book. You had to kill three trolls for it, one of them a navyblood, and you feel sorry, but not enough to regret it. The information you’ve gotten from it is too precious for regret.

_A list of known crimes committed by trolls fitting this profile is found below._

_4th bilunar perigree of the 3rd light season, 612 th sweep: Rustblood female attacked the newly-completed royal complex in the Northern Sea, killing thirty-seven trolls; eighteen violet, nine indigo, three cerulean, seven teal, two jade and five mustard._

_7 th solar perigee of the 5th light season, 834th sweep: Rustblood female destroyed swath of forest in the West, killing one hundred and twenty six trolls; four jade, one hundred and three green, one mustard, and eighteen brown._

_2 nd trisolar perigee of the 1st dim season, 1025th sweep: Rustblood female aggravated a rebellion amongst rust and brown communities, leading to an uprising in which four hundred and thirteen higher-blooded trolls were killed; castes unknown._

_3 rd lunar perigee of the 2nd dark season, 1175th sweep: Rustblood female attacked patrolling unit in western tundra, killing fifty-one..._

Your nutrient sac twists uncomfortably. You close the book and set it aside.

Hundreds of Demonesses, then, spread throughout history, inciting violence wherever they touch. It must be caused by a mutation occurring once in every genetic slurry, or else something more supernatural, but it doesn’t matter. She has to be stopped. If you end the chain, she cannot reproduce; the mutation will die with her. The entire galaxy will be in your debt.

On the map on your wall, you have plotted each attack neatly, dates next to them. They seem randomly-chosen, but nothing in this world is coincidence, you know; there must be some connection with each incident, if only you search for it.

You push the thoughts of her lips from your mind—hard red lips, rough to the touch, but shockingly gentle against your own, she’s as good a kisser as she is a killer—and begin to calculate.

-

Mindfang sinks one of your ships. You send back a round of cannon volleys and abscond.

The Condesce’s Navy General sends you a message. Azaria reads it out through the door to your cabin: “ _Her Condescension requires your presence at the palace and wants to know what the ebber glubbing fuck you are doing in the Far East.”_ You tell her to fuck off.

You attack libraries in the middle of the day while your crew is asleep, using the dim bare sunlight of the dark season as protection and raiding the shelves for the oldest history books, locked away in vaults that you have to blast into with the Crosshairs. New dots appear on the map. You finally begin to see a pattern, or so you think, an epicenter located in the East, and you wake your crew up in the dead of day to change course and steer you there.

One and a half perigees after you nearly lost your life to a rustblood, you step ashore in a tranquil blue forest and begin to hunt.

-

She’s been here recently. There’s smoke in the air, you can smell it, and it brings you back to that morning, warmth all over your body, dangerous warmth. You don’t know where in the forest she’ll be, but she’ll be here, you’re sure of it.

You are alone. You didn’t allow anyone to come with you, not even Azaria, and they’re docked and waiting. You can’t have assistance on this endeavor. It’s your mission, your research and your pride at stake. You cannot let anyone else in range of a Demoness.

The issue now is finding her. You start towards the smoke. Your gun is in your hands; from what you’ve read, it may not do much damage, but the Crosshairs have never failed you. Your gun is a legendary weapon, crafted by millennia-old seatrolls with an extensive knowledge of weaponry and sciences. It’s more powerful than a simple rustblood. You are the Orphaner. You will not be defeated by a simple rustblood.

Your boots land heavy on the fallen leaves, and with every crackling step you wince. She’s got supernatural senses, the books had said; they all had, all possessed uncanny tracking abilities. If you never let her get the upper hand, she will never overcome you. One shot is all you need.

Your skin is very tight. A low humming fills your ears.

You spin on your heel.

The Demoness is crouched on the ground, muscles still tense from her silent leap. She smiles.

“You’ve gotten better,” she murmurs. “Impressive.”

You shoot.

She rolls backward and springs up, releasing her hair from the knitting needles, and assumes a warning stance, sharp points threatening, but you’ve got her on the defensive, fighting you back instead of forward. You’d caught her. She hadn’t expected that.

“You found me quickly,” she says. “It usually takes much longer. I should have expected that from you, though, Orphaner, shouldn’t I?”

Her needles glow red. You jump out of the way just as she fires, red flames igniting the tree where you had just stood. “I’ve studied you,” you tell her. Your voice is ragged. “You’re not gonna get away this time.”

“Cocky. What makes you think you’ll be the one to defeat me when millions of others have tried and failed?”

She spits something in a foreign tongue, and the needles discharge again. You barely evade the twin beams. They shoot past your side, singeing your cape.

You underestimated her once. You’re not going to do it again.

She’s got a lot of advantages over you. Her needles are just as powerful as the Crosshairs and a hundred times lighter, and they seem to be an extension of her arm, carrying out her every movement with precise deadliness. She’s more agile, quicker, and dodges everything you throw, but she is not infallible. Nobody is.

You’ve studied her. You’ve studied all her strengths, and you’ve studied her very few weaknesses, and you’ve committed them all to memory.

You shoot. For the first time, you do not miss.

It cuts at her legs and hits the left one in the shin, and the air fills with the glorious scent of burning skin. The tree behind her bursts into flames. She shrieks and falls.

“Caught you,” you say.

She makes no effort to get up, even when you place a boot on her sternum and bend down. Her eyes glitter red in the firelight. “Are you going to kill me?” she asks, her voice nearly imperceptible.

“Well,” you say, “I haven’t waited this long to let you get away.”

You place the tip of the Crosshairs to her abdomen, flush against the green fabric there, and smile. She looks so _good_ like this, laid out on the ground under you, completely at your will.

“Congratulations,” she murmurs.

Then you’re flying through the air, and there’s no air in your chest, and you feel your skeleton crunch as you hit the ground and skid, chafing you raw, and she stands, sinuous, to lean over you.

“But I think I told you,” she breathes, her words a caress against your bleeding cheek. “Nobody has culled me yet, Orphaner, and nobody is going to cull me until I am ready to be culled.”

This time, she kisses rough. You can’t even protest, can’t even explain what horrible black infidelity this is, because you’ve never experienced anything like this before. It is inside and outside of you, something in your chest and in your brain that makes you unable to move, and all you can do is pull the Demoness down to kiss you more, so hot against you, treacherously warm, this very act is a blood crime, a perversion of the hemospectrum, she shouldn’t even exist.

“You,” she gasps, “are my favorite, I think.”

You think of the indigo captain, how he must have laid here too, once, and all the other trolls that have touched a Demoness, and you realize it has only ever been her, only ever will be her, and you were stupid to think you could kill a cosmic entity like her. You should feel lucky. You are kissing a demigod.

“I hate you,” you say.

She grins. You hate that grin most of all.

"Good," she says. "That's all I wanted to hear."

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it, viridian!!! thanks for the fun prompt. it definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone as a writer, and hopefully it turned out okay! this is my first time writing alternian setting and the worldbuilding aspect of it was awesome to mess with.


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